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The Poetry of Flatulence

Many dialectologists agree: to accurately identify a person’s ‘speech community of origin,’ simply have them recite “Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit.” Here in the Midwest, beans are considered a “magical fruit,” while on the east coast they are not “magical” but “musical.”

It’s difficult to get U.S. Citizens to agree on much of anything, especially what happens the more you eat beans. I’ve always been taught that the more you eat, the more you toot. In Los Angeles, CA they say “fart” not “toot,” and they think beans are neither magical or musical; they don’t even call them a fruit. Angelenos are just trying to spread the word–beans are good for the heart. People can usually agree that more beans make you feel more better (the opposite of what mo’ money does for you). The exception is illustrated with this cautionary version of the “Beans Beans” poem, probably recited exclusively by people living under a bridge in Kentucky:

Beans, beans, they give you gas They make you fart, and burn your ass The more you eat, the more it hurts So slow down your eating to stop the squirts

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Fart and poop jokes are favorites in my home. Family members are often encouraged to gather ’round the toilet to marvel at the size or girth of one of the kids’ bowel movements. When someone clogs the toilet, the kids and husband fight over the plunger. No, that’s not true. I wish it were, though. I’m usually laughing along, but I’m not as enamored with poop now as I was in childhood. I guess I still encourage the obsession, though. I bought Layla and Piper their own copy of “The Gas We Pass,” by Shinta Cho.

Furthermore, I spent a good part of my morning googling “hot farts.” My tummy’s been upset the last few days. Layla admitted to me in the car on our way to Target that she doesn’t mind the sulfuric note my farts have been hitting lately. She thinks they’re better than dad’s straight-up poop-smelling emissions. But they’re bugging me (not the smell, I still like the smell of my farts, for the record, just the frequency is cumbersome). I found a great article that answers all my lingering fart questions and then some. It’s called “Facts on Farts” by Brenna Lorenz and was posted in 1998. It’s an explosion of fart facts highlighted by a fart cloud full of useful links.

I hadn’t scrolled far down the page before I saw a question regarding fart temperature. According to Lorenz, a lot of people inquire about fart heat. I guess a “major source of fart gas is bacterial action. Bacterial fermentation and digestion processes produce heat as a byproduct as well as various pungent gases. The resulting bubbles of gas tend to be small, hot, and concentrated with stinky bacterial metabolic products.” Good to know.
If you need answers to any of your burning fart questions, check out “Facts on Farts.” I’m going to show it to Layla when she gets home from camp later today. I know she’ll enjoy it. And tune in tomorrow, I’ll be exploring the science behind Pubic Dingleberries.

Oh, sometimes I feel like I just live with two little pooping, farting, pissing robots who pretend to be my kids. We have a classification system for bathroom business, it’s waaaaayyyy beyond #1 and #2. I think #4, e.g., is “poop and pee storm,” christened by my older son. He also taught my younger son about “pee parties.” Do you think 9 and 6 is too young to make them clean the toilet? Maybe next year?